Congress knew the cliff was coming. In fact, Congress made the cliff.

About those spoiled children we pay to govern us

Dan Amira is (rightly) incensed at all the complaining members of Congress -- and particularly the Senate -- are doing in the New York Times and elsewhere about having to come back to Washington to work on the the quote fiscal cliff crisis endquote.

Hey, guess what? Nothing requires Congress to wait until the very last second (or even after the very last second) to hammer out a compromise. Nobody is forcing Congress to reach a lofty annual gridlock quota. Congress knew the cliff was coming. In fact, Congress made the cliff. If you wanted to spend some time with your kids over Christmas break, maybe that sense of urgency you're feeling now should have surfaced a few weeks ago. Legislating is your job, and the only reason you're in Washington instead of seeing Les MisÚrables with your family is because you're terrible at it. ...Dan Amira, Daily Intel

3. Corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats, including President Obama,

were complicit in setting up this scam.

They did it by fabricating this "crisis" in the first place; validating it and the right-wing framing of how we got here, e.g. through the President's despicable speech to the nation on "pea eating"; and colluding to ensure the outcome they both sought: austerity for the 99 percent.

This entire process was deliberately rigged from the outset as a Shock Doctrine scam to ensure that the ONLY possible outcomes were austerity or slightly less draconian austerity through the debt ceiling "trigger."

No, it was not ONLY Republicans perpetrating this scam. For decades, Democrats were the only ones standing between predatory corporate policies and the American people. Now too many of them have sold out and abandoned that role, and this is what we get as a result.